Notorious Iraqi clan bemoans its decline

Murderous Al-Majids did Hussein's dirty work, even to kinsmen

July 07, 2003|By Paul Salopek, Tribune foreign correspondent.

Most famous of all, perhaps, was the spectacular revenge wreaked on Hussein and Saddam Kemal Al-Majid, the two senior intelligence officers who fled to Jordan with their wives--Saddam Hussein's daughters--in 1995.

Forgiven to death

Coaxed back with promises of forgiveness, they were slaughtered along with their father, another brother, two sisters, six nieces and nephews and even their two maids as soon as they returned to Baghdad. Chemical Ali, their Al-Majid uncle, did the grisly honors.

"Saddam's daughters and their children were spared, but they never forgave their father," said Ibrahim Hassan Al-Majid, 31, whose 12-year-old brother was blown up by a car bomb in an unrelated family vendetta.

"Saddam kept sending them candy until the government fell in April," Hassan said. "They never opened it. They thought it was poisoned."

The daughters, Ragha and Rana, remain in hiding in Iraq. They still place forlorn satellite phone calls to their Al-Majid in-laws every week. They are said to be depressed and in constant terror of reprisal attacks by nameless enemies.

Three months after U.S. tanks roared into Baghdad, such fears of payback still haunt the once-mighty Al-Majids.

Luxurious family mansions have been looted and occupied by belligerent squatters. The clan's Mercedes-Benzes have been hijacked. And complaints to U.S. occupation forces go nowhere, several cousins said.

"We are being targeted because of our name," said Ahmed Favel Hassan Al-Majid, a nephew of Chemical Ali who lost his house to a group of squatters. He seemed particularly incensed that the squatters were wearing his purloined Italian suits around the neighborhood.

Sheik Kemal, whose mansion is growing tatty--drying laundry often hangs between his marble pillars these days--does what he can for the stream of dispossessed and unemployed relatives who continue to show up at his garden.

"I tell them they need to change their reputations," he said. "I tell them they must help build a new Iraq."

As the family sheik, he was doing his part, he asserted. He had been encouraging "bad" Al-Majids who are wanted for war crimes to emerge from hiding and surrender to U.S. forces. Five have.

The sheik dubbed these arrests his "contribution to democracy."

But later, over sweet tea, he quietly admitted reasons closer to his Al-Majid bones. He was going after the relatives who wiped out the two intelligence officers, who were his brothers. He was out for revenge.